Between the Heart and the Mind

Please excuse the lack of organization I expect from this post. I have a question in my mind that I'm not quite sure how to put into words, but I'm going to do my best.

As Christians, God calls us to forgive and forget. We're not supposed to seek vengence nor are we supposed to feel glory from the misgivings of those who have wronged us. But what do we do, when we know how we're supposed to react, yet in our hearts, we haven't gotten there yet? In other words--our mind tells us to feel one way, but our heart just doesn't want to and we don't know how to change it. Does that make any sense at all?

Some examples of why this is on my mind at the moment:

The church I grew up in recently went through a mountain of heart-breaking turmoil fueled by fraud and lies and the church ultimately split. Many tears were shed and many friendships broken all because of a few who spread their ill will to the many--unfortunately, majority of those "many" were, and still are, completely ignorant to the truth. Thankfully, there was a large contingent who saw the light, and stood up for what they believed was God's will. A new, happy, God-filled church was born. Without going into too much detail, allegations of a lack of integrity from those who worked tirelessly to try to grow the original church and left for the new church, have made their way to the ears of the accused. (For the record, the accused did absolutely NOTHING wrong. Their intentions were noble, in accordance with church by-laws and most importantly, Biblical.) Bascially, the original church got their way, yet they still feel the need to gossip and worry about the what's going on at the new church.

So my question is this--is it okay to find this amusing knowing that the focus should be on God's will for the new church and not what other people are STILL talking about? I, personally, struggle with knowing that I should pray for the original church, that they can find God's will and grow through it. But in all honesty, I'm waiting for the "I told you so!" moment when everything comes crashing down for them. I have a feeling I'm going to see it someday, but should I be looking forward to it? Probably not. So how do I change my heart in the matter? And does it help that I KNOW I shouldn't feel like that?

Next example:

A very good male friend of mine recently confided in me that one of his best friends, who also happens to be his roommate, is dating his ex-girlfriend. All's fair in love and war, right? Not exactly. You see, over the last couple of months, my friend had expressed to this girl that he still might have feelings for her and might want to try dating again--starting slowly of course. Even though she turned him down, she still wanted to remain friends. However, during this time, she would do things like hold his hand and give him signals that would say otherwise. Also during this time, my friend was having long talks with his best friend/roommate about the situation. He knew more about my friend's feelings really than anyone else and gave him a lot of advice and just an ear.

My friend went on vacation with his family and while he was gone, something between the best friend/roommate and ex-girlfriend happened. They had hung out in group settings many times before and my friend had never seen anything to allude to the fact that they might be interested in each other. So instead of doing the RIGHT thing and waiting to do anything about these feelings until my friend got home from vacation so they could have a face to face discussion about everything, best friend/roommate just couldn't stand it and had to clear his conscience to make himself feel better about it and called my friend to tell him all this and ruin the rest of his vacation. Classy.

My friend is extremely hurt--but he knows he has to forgive best friend/roommate. He is struggling with large amounts of anger because, he doesn't own ex-girlfriend. She has every right to date whomever she wants. Nor does he own best friend/roommate. But with both of them knowing his feelings from the past couple of months, and still going ahead with everything, he's majorly and understandably hurt...and he doesn't know how he's going to do what he knows, as a Christian, he's supposed to do. In his mind, he knows he should forgive and even pray for them, but his heart doesn't feel that way yet and it's probably going to take a long time for it to get to that point.

So does it count when you KNOW it, but you don't FEEL it?